"You are not born a woman: you become one". This week we have the partnership of Jimena Salinas, 1st year student of Degree at Philosophy. In this article she reflects on the history of the second sex and how to make it transcend.

In the temporary recesses, where oppression is intertwined with the longed-for emancipation, emerges The Second Sexone of the intellectual journeys forged in the pages of Simone de Beauvoir. A corner of feminine existence where immanence imposes its chains, making it impossible to transcend. In which De Beauvoir's narrative becomes a resonance of freedom in the face of an oppressive world sculpted by the social and cultural construction of identity. A carving in which the advantage does not lie in what it entails to become a woman. Because "you are not born a woman: you become one", taking into account that, from an early age, she is molded by a patriarchal structure that underlies society and establishes her identity, giving way to build herself as an alterity. 

In this sense, De Beauvoir questions and challenges being a woman; she unravels the essence of this feminine identity from an existentialist point of view, understanding the human being not as a fixed essence, but as a project that is constructed from a vision applicable to gender. This raises the question: what is it to be a woman? 

First written request, it is understood that what is known as a woman is a question that continues to be redefined. Because being a woman is not her biological or genetic qualities, it is all the behaviors and roles that have been assigned, taught and imposed on her throughout her life. Challenging, thus, the notion of an inherent feminine essence. 

Likewise, it is important to mention how, throughout history, woman has been understood as the other, while man has been recognized as the absolute subject, as a kind of universal subject, as the human being by definition; even when evoking a human being as an abstraction, a male figure is thought of as the neutral, without any determination of gender. In fact, the one to whom a gender is specified and designated is the woman, which already implies a certain Degree of inferiority and domination.

On the other hand, it should be noted that the dichotomy between immanence and transcendence emerges as a common thread core topic in De Beauvoir's work, since it explores how society and culture impose predefined roles that relegate women to live in immanence, being, many times, limited to the reproduction of the conditions of existence of the family, which historically has prevented them from individualizing themselves. For, throughout all stages of life, women are educated in subordination, facing the perception of their biological status as a disadvantage and limiting their ability to realize transcendence, that is, to reach their plenary session of the Executive Council potential as free human beings; living, instead, with a perspective of passivity that has been part of their teaching. And precisely, in this construction of women, freedom and control over their own lives are forbidden to them, which constrains them to these social Structures .  

In addition, the critique of patriarchy becomes essential in this work as it is a sexual politics, identified as the fundamental system that perpetuates female oppression. It becomes a system that creates the product called woman and that will be the one that makes life easier for her. Taking into account, in turn, a false consciousness arising from this patriarchy, which leads women to internalize and accept as natural their position of social inferiority.

Specifically, De Beauvoir analyzes how the status of women coerces their freedom. The Second Sex is not only positioned as a work that goes beyond the primordial demands of feminism: it stands as a forceful testimony of the cultural construction of female identity, seeking to define without being oppressed by the social impositions of the patriarchal system. It not only advocates changing the role of women, but also transforming society as a whole. Seeking the emancipation of both women and men, challenging the deconstruction of predefined notions of gender and advocating for a society in which female and male identity are not determined by stereotypes, but by individual freedom and gender equality. 

Because you are no less a woman for the way you dress, for studying, for working, or for wanting, or not, to have a family. Your worth is not measured in conformity to pre-established roles, but in the freedom to forge your own destiny as an act of resistance against the reductionist definitions that have pigeonholed you. By defying imposed limitations, we can write our own stories and be architects of a future in which immanence is not predetermined and transcendence is no longer a dream but a reality. 

BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES

Beauvoir, Simone (1949)1998. The Second Sex. Madrid. Chair.

García, Á. (2013). The feminist thought of Simone de Beauvoir in The second sex [Universidad Jaume I].

The second sex of Simone de Beauvoir (2011). Internauta Sin guideline.

Roman, A. (2023). The BIRTH of FEMINIST THEORY? The Second Sex of Simone de Beauvoir.

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